Hurting my arm at age 12: A lonely, lonely time

By Ed Piper

It was a lonely, lonely time.

I had hurt my pitching arm when I was 12--not from throwing a curve, but from not warming up for noontime softball in junior high, when our P.E. coach, Mr. Cornelius, had said, "No warm-ups today. Let's play the whole lunch period."

The first five batters' grounders, as I remember it, came to me at third base. Each time, I threw to first. On the fifth throw, without properly limbering my arm up, I felt my arm go numb as I watched the ball sail high and over the first baseman's head.

I hadn't told anyone, not Mr. Cornelius, nor my parents, who would have been totally supportive.

My thought now, looking back five decades: If I had only stopped right then, not thrown another ball, told someone...

Fast-forward a month or two, and an older boy hung around our practice for the Voodoos (the team was named after a fighter plane at nearby Oxnard Air Force Base, a few miles down Las Posas Road).

After practice, and after everyone dispersed, he approached me and asked me to throw him some batting practice. It played into my ego a little, as one of the stars on my Major League team (ages 10-12).

I didn't have the courage to say no, that my arm was hurting.

By then, I had quit winning games.

We played six innings in the non-Little League-affiliated Pleasant Valley Baseball Association (PVBA). In the Voodoos' first seven games, I won four of them--every other game, which I started--all on complete games, all, I believe, on shutouts.

I could throw hard. At that age, I wasn't a pitcher. I was a thrower. But I could throw darned hard. Plus I had a roundhouse curve that actually curved around the plate and landed in our catcher Nick Pena's glove. Not too many opposing batters hit my big curve, or the fastball, for that matter.

Plus I was wild enough to scare everyone back a little, making them more cautious in digging in.

After I hurt my arm playing lunchtime softball on that fateful weekday, the wins had dried up. My arm felt numb, and rotten, all at the same time. And I hadn't told anyone.

You know when something happens, and it might not be visible from the outside, but you know it isn't right.

That's the way it was.

So, this older boy, whom I had never met, led me over to another backstop at Las Posas School, where I had attended the second half of fifth grade and all of sixth grade.

I was now a student at Los Altos Intermediate School.

But Las Posas was right down the street from my house, and it was the home field for the Voodoos.

I threw and threw. The boy asked me especially to throw him curves, which made my arm hurt even more.

I had no speed, no rhythm. I could deliver the ball, but I knew--he didn't--that this wasn't my good stuff. My good stuff was gone since that lunchtime at third base making those five throws.

And he didn't hold me against my will. I could have told him I had to go, that my arm was hurting. But I didn't.

It was a lonely time.

By the next spring, the call of the new baseball season was renewed.

My parents had finally figured out that something was wrong with my arm. It hurt, and I wasn't happy.

I sat, crying like crazy, sitting on my parents' queen-size bed in their bedroom at the end of the hall. The occasion was a summit meeting. It wasn't a meeting at all, just my parents' caring, concerned way of trying to support me by figuring out what I wanted to do.

In the meantime, over the winter, my father had somehow arranged a special session in the training room of Ducky Drake, the famous athletic trainer at UCLA.

I don't know how he got me in for an appointment, but my dad drove me to the campus the hour distance from our home in Camarillo. I got a personal, one-on-one treatment from Ducky Drake. He, I think, gave me a whirlpool treatment and some massage on the arm.

He gave me a pep talk to encourage me, as my father had obviously communicated through channels how much playing baseball meant to me.

I remember Ducky Drake's admonition to "keep your arm warm". "Wear a jacket. It protects your arm," he told me.

He also pointed out as I walked toward him that my right arm hung lower than my left. "That's a common thing with pitchers," he told me. I felt proud to be recognized that way. I was a pitcher, and he could tell.

Someone else might have remarked on my throwing arm hanging lower than my other arm. I'm not sure.

Back on my parents' bed in the spring, they both asked me, as I continued crying over my arm pain, "Eddie, what do you want to do?"

Obviously, I wanted to keep playing baseball. Hurting arm or not, I wasn't going to stop playing my favorite sport.

So, there wasn't a magic wand they could wave to make my arm better. And I had already thrown enough that the damage was already done.

Ducky Drake's inspiring treatment was hugely meaningful, but it didn't instantly turn my numbness and hurt back.

I don't know that there was any treatment at that time that would have helped my arm. The key time had been the moment I first felt the numbness, the deadness on that fifth throw. I think I probably would have had to stop all throwing at that moment, and not use the arm to throw until rest or treatment or something else yielded results.

Back in my 12-year-old season, I only won one more game after the four straight complete-game shutout wins to start the schedule. The Voodoos played two more rounds of seven games each, and, as I remember it, I continued to pitch. I didn't tell our manager, a caring man who came to know our family, Harvey "Buck" Pena.

I don't think I ever told him the full story.

The one game I won in the final two rounds, totaling 14 games, or what would have been seven or so starts, I was upset on the mound at Las Posas School, my arm hurting. We were facing the Braves and Allan Giffen. After the Braves got a few hits off me and took the lead, 4-3, going into the bottom of the sixth inning, they began to say, "We figured out something about Piper's pitches."

They hadn't found out anything earth-shaking, only that they could now hit my pitches since they didn't have the normal pop or movement.

Mr. Pena, obviously not understanding the extent of my injury, implored me to stay in the game and keep pitching, despite my request to leave the mound.

So, I had to win the game myself with my bat. In the bottom of the sixth inning, coming up with a runner on base, I hit a home run that drove in two and led to a 5-4 comeback victory over Allan Giffen and the Braves.

You had to run out your homers there, because we had no fences in the outfield.

I told my parents that next spring that I wanted to keep playing, hurt arm or not. And I did, for four more seasons.

I even pitched as a 14-year-old two years later in Pony League, dominating with my fastball and big roundhouse curve, even with my hurt arm.

As a sophomore shortstop on the high school junior varsity, Coach Cornelius having transferred from the junior high to Camarillo High, now my JV baseball coach, he had a scout for the Cincinnati Reds watch each of us throw from the mound on the JV field.

"You hurt your arm, didn't you?" queried the veteran scout of me. "Yes," I said. I didn't know how he could tell. But I had adjusted my throw in some way so that I could make do as I kept on playing in the wake of hurting my arm.